Aigarius Bloghttp://aigarius.com/blog/Mindblogging the world to itselfen60minutesDebian-planetSoCUKUbuntu.lv-planetUncategorizedaikidoandroidanimeappleaudiobarefootbicyclebiologyblogbmwbooksbrusselsbugsbushbusinesscarcatchinacookingcosplaydebconf10debconf11debconf13debconf14debconf15debconf17debconf5debconf6debconf7debconf9debiandjangodockerdrwhoebayeeepceventffiiflossfoodgamesgermanygnomegooglehackhardwarehistoryhockeyhomecominghumorhumouri18nideaiphonelakalatvianlegalliktalinuxmememorzesmsmoviemusicmustachenewsnexus-spalmparispeoplephotophotoriverpoliticsprogrammingps3pythonpythonsbackupscienceshoppingsleepsoftwarespamsportswpatsystemdtalkingtikiwikitravelubuntuusawaveweatherworkwowyogaMon, 29 May 2017 21:30:10 +0000BMW 330e first 20 000 km reviewhttp://aigarius.com/blog/2017/05/29/bmw-330e-first-20-000-km-review/<p><span style="">So, just to start this thing off - I am quite biased in the regards of this car as I am now working for BMW for a year and this is my company car. Also I have not had the pleasure of testing its direct competition. But I still wanted to share my experiences with this rather special product. I have now driven 20 000 km in this car, so it is time for a first review.</span></p>
<p><span style="">Before this car I only had one other - a sweet 2013 Mercedes C 180D that I traveled around the Europe in and that made me start to appreciate cars and made me seriously consider applying for a job at BMW when they sponsored Debconf 15 in Germany. It was a comfortable high quality car with enough power and a whole lot of tech toys.</span></p>
<p><span style="">After 6 months working at BMW it was time for me to choose a company car (and sell my old car). It is not mandatory, but the value in this proposition is very significant and you'd be missing out a lot by not taking that. So I started looking at the BWM website and selecting a car for myself.</span></p>
<p><span style="">I am a big fan of electric cars. I love Tesla and everything that Elon Musk is doing to the car and energy markets. Unfortunately the Model S was out of my price range and Model 3 is still not there yet. BWM also has a few full and partial electrified options, but the selection is rather limited so far. i8 is outside my price range and rather unpractical. i3 was a serious contender, but I am not a fan of its looks that scream "I am an electric car!" and the charging infrastructure was not yet there to allow me to drive from Germany to Latvia easily. And that was one of the goals that my new car would have to be able to do. I was also very interested in travelling all over the Alps on weekends and having to stop at a charger for an hour every couple hours would really limit the places that one could feasibly visit in a day or two and still return home. Even with the battery upgrade (announced after I already made my order) and range extended the i3 is not really fun to drive on highways.</span></p>
<p><span style="">So the selection really was between BMW 225xe and BMW 330e. These cars basically have very similar powertrains - the 87hp electric motor is combined with either a 134hp (225xe) or 182hp (330e) gasoline engine and both have a small 7.7 kWh battery that realistically is enough for around 20 km. After trying the BMW 225xe Active Tourer, I decided for the 330e - I did not feel too comfortable in the higher seating position. It was safe and stable, but at highway speeds I had the feeling that the face of the car was really working hard to push the air out of the way.</span></p>
<p><span style="">It took 4 months from the order to delivery of my 330e - they are very, very popular. BMW can't make enough of them to satisfy demand.</span></p>
<p><span style="">Despite my screwup in the ordering (I managed to miss ticking the tech package, so no HUD for me), I was floored by the car as soon as I got in and then again when I first got on the autobahn with it.The car is amazing. It has its weaknesses, but the strengths clearly overpower them.</span></p>
<p><span style="">Basically BMW made a car that is: a green eco daily driver around town and a beast on the autobahn and a powerhouse in the twisty Alpine roads and just another great BMW 3 series car and also a positive way to transition any petrolhead to electric. Let me explain in detail how that works.</span></p>
<p><span style="">Starting with the price - BMW 330e has the same petrol motor as BMW 320i, but the electric motor added to that brings the total power to the same level as BMW 330i and it costs just 1k€ more than the 330i. However, selecting 330e already pre-selects a few additional options with combined worth of 810€, so in fact choosing the hybrid system itself only costs you 190€ (comparing to to gasoline-only 3 series car with the same power level).</span></p>
<p><span style="">There are a few drawbacks that get a bit hidden here. Fuel tank of 300e is reduced from 60l down to 45l. There is no underfloor storage in the boot of the car (where there is usually a spare wheel). Top speed of the 330e is limited to 235 km/h unlike the 330i that is limited to 250 km/h. The 330e is almost 200kg heavier than the 330i, this can be felt in acceleration, but does not hinder cornering as much because this weight is very low. There is no option to have a trailer coupling or have a wagon (touring) version of the 330e for more cargo space. This can be annoying sometimes, but in the end none of these were a deal-breaker for me.</span></p>
<p><span style="">If you (or someone you know) is a petrolhead and you want then to transition over to the electric side slowly and happily - get them to buy this car and soon enough they will be seeking out charging stations and seriously considering getting a full electric next. BMW 330e is a real BMW - it is a driver's car. It accelerates, corners, breaks and even drifts with the best of them. However (and here where petrolheads get hooked), it does this best when there is some charge in the battery. When there is charge in the battery and you press the gas pedal, you get the rush of instant, electrical acceleration while the gasoline engine turbines are still spooling up to speed. And that instant electrical power works at all speeds - from standstill up to the max speed, because the electrical engine is mounted before the gearbox, so it can assist the gasoline engine at all speeds. However, if you do not plug your car in to recharge it will revert back to the power levels of a BMW 320i with a couple big passengers in the back - it will still be quick, but you will feel (and miss) the difference. And that feeling will be what will drive even the heartiest petrolhead to install a charging station map app or start using the build-in navigation with its extensive list of charging station points of interest. From there it is just a small step to a charger at home and then to a fully electric car as a serious consideration. In fact if you switch on the Sport mode of the car, it will try to keep the battery charged up to 10-15% so that it could give you the full power of the car when needed, just like a KERS system in Formula 1. Cars such as this are essential in bringing people from gasoline to electric propulsion gradually and also gradually building up demand for charging infrastructure and forming habits at all levels - from personal to institutional.</span></p>
<p><span style="">Hopefully by the time people start looking for replacements for their BMW 330e there will be new plugin hybrid and fully electric options in this category with larger batteries and much better fast and slow charging infrastructure all over the world.</span></p>
<p><span style="">I was pleasantly surprised by the iDrive navigation interfaces. I was very used to driving using Waze before this, because the build-in maps in cars are often bad and outdated and also usually take more attention to operate than the apps on the phones nowadays. Not so with the new BMW navigation software (I have the Professional version). I found that I could do common operations like navigating to an address of a contact or adding a stop at a fuel station along the route much faster, with fewer actions and with less attention to the screen than with a phone. In addition having the destination programmed into the car turned out to have multiple additional benefits. For example the hybrid system in this car communicates with the map to know when the route goes uphill or downhill and adjust power regeneration for that. Also the car will automatically save up some battery towards the end of a journey if it is inside a city so that you can drive the last few kilometers on pure electric and reduce your in-city pollution (both air and noise). The car will also then be able to display information about the next turn or how exactly are you supposed to drive through the next complex intersection in the instrument cluster (or HUD) so that you don't have to glance to the central screen for that info.</span></p>
<p><span style="">One other big feature that I loved in the 330e is the remote climate control. As the car already has a large battery inside of it, it can use this battery for all kinds of nice things, for example you can command the car from your phone to start pre-conditioning the climate in the car. In the winter that would warm the car up and in the summer cool it down to the temperature you last set in the car. Some gasoline cars also have such service available as options, but as they do not have the battery, adding this option requires complex additional hardware that starts up the car's engine remotely to provide enough power for the climate control to work. As you might imagine that kind of option is not cheap. And you can also set this to work on a timer too. The pre-conditioning will fail if there is not enough power in the battery, so that is another reason to plug in your car into the charger early and often.</span></p>
<p><span style="">The remote services also remove the anxiety of thinking if you actually locked the car or not - you can always just take your phone and send a remote lock signal.</span></p>
<p><span style="">The real life fuel consumption of 330e is something that is quite hard to find online and I understand why - it varies. Really, really varies.</span></p>
<p><span style="">If you have a power plug you can and do use either at work or at home, then you might go weeks without using any fuel at all. BTW it takes 3 hours to fully charge from a normal 220V 16A socket and 2 hours from any Type 2 socket. Unfortunately the car can not take more than 3 kW from any source, so all the fast charger power is kind of wasted on this car. But you still can recover 10-15 km of range from a half an hour lunch stop at a free Type2 charger at IKEA and sometimes that is all you really need to get where you need to go.</span></p>
<p><span style="">At the other extreme of fuel use is flying at 200-220 km/h on the unlimited sections of the German autobahn. It is a delight to do this in this car - it is rock solid, stable and very predictable even at top speed. It has great brakes for that moment when someone does not notice you in their rearview mirrors. Your attention focuses on the next moment, the next breath, then next car, the next bend. Most of the time you do not even hear the engine (unless you turn on to the Sport mode) - the cabin is well insulated and wind and tire noise only start to penetrate it at speeds over 200 km/h. For that experience you have to be then prepared to pay with average fuel consumption around 8 l/100km and frequent refueling stops due to smaller fuel tank.</span></p>
<p><span style="">If you are outside Germany and the highway speed is limited to 130 km/h then your cruising fuel consumption is likely to be closer to 4 l/100km. Park yourself on the tail of a trailer truck following it with active cruise control at 90 km/h in EcoPro mode and you might find your "Remaining range" indication actually increasing while the car sips 2-2.5 l/100km. Been there, done that a few times.</span></p>
<p><span style="">One other cool feature that my car has (it is an option) is the Adaptive LED far light. I was already used to automatic far light on my Mercedes that turned off the far lights as soon as it saw another car in front. However, this BMW system does more than that - it actually keeps the far lights active while creating a "shadow" area pointing at the detected car(s) so that even if there is a car in front of me I can still have the road sides fully illuminated all the time. Sometimes, when I am driving behind another car the system works so well that my far lights shining around the car in front illuminate the surroundings better and further than the lights of the car in front. This does confuse a lot of people however as they think that I will blind them as my high beams are still on as they approach. So there a lot of angry high beam blinking. But I guess people will get used to such systems soon enough.</span></p>
<p><span style="">I will not go into much details about the costs of the car for me except to say that BMW Car IT is a great employer and thanks to their company car program I am paying <em>less</em> per month for this 2017 BMW 330e than I paid for my 2012 Mercedes C 180D (when insurance, maintenance, depreciation, tires and fuel are included). And I am driving significantly more with it as well - I was driving an average of 1900 km per month with the Mercedes and now I am averaging 3500 km a month in the BMW. Having company paid fuel inside Germany helps in that a lot. ;)</span></p>
<p><span style="">If I was choosing a new car now then I would also very seriously consider the new BMW 530e - basically it is the same kind of setup except some 10k€ more for a new level in style and comfort, newer version of the iDrive, completely new chassis platform with carbon fiber and other fancy stuff, new engine generation, more advanced driving assistance and parking assistance options and even more space in the back. There are way more fancy options in the 5 series lineup, such as massage seats or gesture control or rear seat entertainment screens or remote vision - where you can see in your phone video from the surround cameras of your car. I expect that some of this will also trickle down to 3 series when it will get its next refresh that is rumored to be in the next couple of years. And there will be more options - the BWM future model readmap as already stated multiple times publicly includes plans for electrified cars in all segments (mostly plugin hybrids) as well as more specific plans for fully electric Mini and BMW X3 models in the next couple years. And then there will be the much rumored iNEXT car due in 2021 model year which will not only be electric, but also capable of authonomy up to Level 5. These really are interesting times in the automotive world. Thanks, Elon! :)</span></p>
<p><span style="">I have driven this car since it was manufactured in January 2017. It started with 3km on its odometer. Now it is at 20 000 km. I expect to drive it until January 2019 and I expect the final odometer to be between 80 and 100 thousand km. We will see how the car holds up over the time.</span></p>aigariusMon, 29 May 2017 21:30:10 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2017/05/29/bmw-330e-first-20-000-km-review/bmwcargermanyMoving to Germanyhttp://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/28/moving-to-germany/<p>After a long contemplation about what I want to do with my life and just as long a negotiation, I have accepted a job offer at BMW and will be moving from Latvia to Ulm, Germany in January 2016.</p>
<p>It is going to be a big change and a big shake-up in my life, but the change should be for the better, eventually. I am going to move there using my car, loading a single car load of essential stuff and leaving the rest behind. My cat will be amond the essentials, so I have already started training him for car rides. The cat is not thrilled about it. I'll be renting out my current apartment - I wish to find someone that I know to rent to, but if noone comes up, then I'll have to give it to a renting company to rent out for me.</p>
<p>There should be little change for my online activities, but this means that I will be less available for parties in Riga for the forseable future. Wish me luck!</p>aigariusMon, 28 Dec 2015 11:01:05 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/28/moving-to-germany/Debian-planetUbuntu.lv-planetgermanytravelworkSummary of the Debconf15 road trip (part 2)http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/11/summary-of-the-debconf15-road-trip-part-2/<p>At the end of the <a href="http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/10/summary-of-the-debconf15-road-trip/">previous part</a> of this tale of travel and cars I was being dunk around the heavy waves of the azure variety against the hard stones of the Med coast near Nice, France. The next stop was a wild card before going to Venice and so a small hotel was chosen high above a mountain lake in northern Italy. This meant that the whole day was to be spent crossing the top of Italy from Med to Alps. Italy has very nice paid motorway system that makes crossing large distances easy, but not really cheap. One larger drive cost just over 40€ alone. But there are benefits - the speed is nice (not autobahn-nice, but still) and there is also the amazing thing called <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOv4cXfGIn34AhNMuaVv9D1WSoUrG21kwbcwxyQ?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">AutoGrill</a> this looked like just a regular road-side fast food joint, but that was until we looked closer. There was a wide selection of nice salads, there was a <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOQXxWTmbWgyCfKo3qg7Kukct4WO9NUkNbsFek0?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">freshly grilled meat</a> pepared per order lots of wine by glass and a huge selection of Italian wines and pasta to buy. It was amazing. Maybe because our expectations were rather low, but it was truly good food. We saw many AutoGrills after that, even outside of Italy, but the ones outside of Italy were not as great.</p>
<p>Going back into Alps was a great idea. The views along the road were good, but the view out of our <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hotel+Poggio+d'Oro+Albergo+Ristorante/@45.7665051,10.0267839,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x4783df5da97d584f:0x3f8e6303c01d627f?hl=en">hotel</a> window was <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOoFPSbf_wnVRxHJX--ae-nwzumE7UjlSl4W1SM?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">just majestic</a>. Both during the day and <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNzF57kTa-OD6MIIX_jXuAJbwqURDUjubsw9lFp?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">at night</a> as well.The hotel rooms even have balconies where you can sit in the evening with a blanket, a glass of local wine and a book. And in the morning .. imagine going out into a sunny and warm morning with a full plate of fresh breakfast food in one hand and cup of coffee in another, crossing the surprisingly active mountain street and sitting down in the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMc-75RPyIIIjXeKStLJEDReZLfm5xRkltCiJ0u?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">shade of the tent</a> pitched on an outcrop from the cliff of the mountain with the fantastic view of the amazing lake and the mountains that contain it. As you eat your morning meal an occasional Fiat is barreling by the narrow twisting road at approximately 100 kmh and others slow down to 80 kmh before taking a blind downward 60 degree turn into a diving side street that is even narrower. And you realise then and there that life is amazing and every moment matters.</p>
<p>That is the perfect mindset to have when going to Venice. Which we did. After a short drive we arrived at a very cheap "hotel" near Venice (Camping Village Jolly). It was actually a permanent camping ground. There was a swimming pool, restaurant and an administration building that is surrounded by several hundreds of permanently parked trailers. You could rent parking space for your own trailer or a tent place or you could rent a "room" which is basically one of those trailers. Each of them has 2-3 cot type beds, bathroom with a tiny shower and an air conditioning unit. It was perfectly serviceable and much cheaper than all the normal hotels in the area. It was a half an hour of walking to the train station to get to actual Venice, but that was not too bad either. The camp "bus to Venice" was not a great choice as it arrives to a segregated section of Venice where you need to use some other (expensive) transport to get to the actual city. It was a better idea to use a local regular bus route 6 to get straight to the bus station.</p>
<p>Venice is a very cool city. At first you enter it and are surrounded by thousands and thousands of tourists all running the same routes to the same places. But it only takes a few minutes to loose the crowd and dive into smaller side streets and wander away to nearly empty streets where only the locals walk around. Even with millions of tourists every year, still Venice has a lot of spaces where tourists do not go and where locals dominate the scene. There are streets with multiple restaurants where you hear no English and all the locals eat their meals and drink their wine. Some streets end in a <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPUiQJ0uNuC6igLBExeEHaPIVuPsx5VF8vBJOTm?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">dead end into a canal</a> where you can step down and check out the fishes. And the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMsVm3l4tU6yCqgW9DDChc1J-7WE1qJObEHsHXH?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">locals</a> do love their fishes. Every street looks <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipP4m7FYpxnF2ic_lfEpuhIiAPk37uiMLq-O_8de?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">amazing</a> in Venice. And the large scale architecture in between the tight old building is <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNp05DJBO5ILq5RDb6uq9aW5FaDEkRecsfA8rh4?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">astonishing</a> in the way it stands out. And every house could be a ancient <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMXPzK6xLjeUsEzkxdxaDB2VqiFmgZdOtv_Bsso?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">castle</a> of a wealthy family. The touristy places look very <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNiEgITSkOqi1InvXhoAzUWWPqoPFmiZsDi1HVv?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">impressive</a>, but other places look <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNVImbm_L6zilggcBou9TvvsXvt1-pgCBPSJTn0?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">even better</a> with a bit of a look. And there are no hawkers of the shiny flying things in the less touristy places. You can even chill in one of many tiny parks where locals come together to chill, play with their dogs and drink more wine. Venice was also the place where we had the most amazing meal of the trip. There was a restoraunt that was so popular that it had tables outside, but not just outside, they had tables right by the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipM_8QVzBeWsBd9mv3U6GoRqFN3VmVJm3YtWfGhN?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">edge of the canal</a>. You could literally not move one of the chairs back with the risk of falling into the water. A docking boat actually reached for an anchor point that was between the chair legs. But the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipP1W-E-VDA4_fGeu9su_o6m1gHlLm64tFleBd5j?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">food</a> was amazing with some great house wine as well. We spent two full days in Venice. It was just scratching the surface not even entering any buildings really, but the place still left a very strong impression of an ancient and content power on me. A fun stat that I remember from a "No Reservacions" episode about Venice was that, despite being a huge tourist attraction, people living in Venice make just as much money from logistics and fishing as from tourism. It is not a one trick town and it shows in places where tourists don't go.</p>
<p>After Venice started the return part of the trip. The plan here was simple - go a *long* distance every day with minimal stops for food and sleep. It was a bit tiresome, but it was not too hard on me. When you have cruise control and some music loaded into your phone the hours and the kilometers just <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMcSJtdU8bPX99kIxiqh6LYPtC4lk-pMcsG1FaP?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">melt</a> away on the great highways of Italy, Austria, Slovakia and Poland. The days melded together in my mind, so I had to use Google Location History to reconstruct them. Crossing the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNp3UxFyUL3ldA5vZY-EmRhvkc1PQuCjRghit3E?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">Alps</a> via highways is fast and easy, but not really much fun. Both Austria and Slovakia required me to buy and stick into the window a vignette sticker to be able to drive on their roads. The stickers cost less than what I paid for the roads on the vignette-less Italy, so that was actually a welcome change at this point. In one day of driving I went from Venice to Vienna. Surprisingly the Vienna was the place where we had the best sushi of the trip. They had amazing melt-on-your-tongue tuna and the rise was best I've had outside of Japan. Vienna also was the place where we saw this nice, if <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNGl6kquXbOmM82821e7lbW1CF30cjvZUaBl1sn?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">expensive piece of art</a>. It also had an exhibition at the time about the fate of the Eastern Europe in the Soviet hands with the texts and photos from Poland, Baltics and Ukraine. The information was accurate and the emotional impact was quite nice to see.</p>
<p>The next day the trip home continued with another long stretch from Vienna to Lodz in Poland. This leg was not a long as it could be because someone in the car had not been to IKEA before and I simply had to enlighten the poor individual about the health and mental benefits of swedish meatballs while also picking up a few trinkets for home. It was amazing as always. IKEA is a house of fun and fantasy. Well maybe that was just the trip fatigue talking from hours of sitting that a walk through a colorful showroom with all kinds of funky almost-useful stuff was a refreshing change. Polish highways were a pleasant surprise after all the horror stories that people have been telling about them. But the Poland changed with the EU - there is a huge number of new motorways constructed with a bunch of bridges in all the possible colors crossing them. The designs of the bridges does not change much, but the color does. It's the little things that you notice after 6 hours on the road. Lodz met us with some post-soviet road layout and even more post-soviet style of hotel that looked like the typical upscale communist party regional hotel, but cleaned up with some marble columns and refreshed power sockets. It felt like this was a soviet hotel a long time ago, but the hotel had clearly moved on. Nothing said this more than the episode in the morning in the lobby of the hotel - a woman was explaining to the young girl in reception that she left a cooling block from a car refrigerator in the hotel freezer and that she wanted it back now. The girl did not understand her. She understood basic russian, but the word for refrigerator - she just did not know it. I had to translate russian to english, so that the woman could get what she needed in a hotel of a rather large city in Poland. The english of the service personnel was perfect. That is something that we are going to as well.</p>
<p>Final day was a bit of a hell. I did 11 hours of pure driving from Lodz straight to Riga. We only stopped for a lunch at a random roadside polish tavern "Under the Black Boar" for a quick, but solid meal and then for another meal in Panevezys where we tried to find the only 7+ rated restaurant in the city that Foursquare knew about, but it was closed and there was a new place there called Pizza di Napoli. We were just from Italy here eating pizza in Lithuania. And it was a very solid and <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMTy81pKIaBDEnGDk7r-5DVqbCIzJ5_Usqqs7Bx?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">fresh pizza</a>. Latvia met us with an amazing contrast of deep fog and shining full moon. There was no way to photograph that, but it looked amazing and it felt like home.</p>
<p>In the end the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipN_spO39UTcdVEF_A4RdRj8YI5qRrqzowjZeK-m?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">full trip</a> took 4803 km driven in 61 hours and 35 minutes giving the average speed of 78 km/h and the average fuel consumption of 5.5l per 100 km. The numbers of the car computer matched almost perfectly with the numbers that my fuel tracking application showed for the trip. I filled the tank before the trip and after the above picture was taken. In total I used 264 liters of diesel fuel for the whole trip. Some of that fuel was bought for around 1€ per liter, but some of it cost as much as 1.7€ in one of the full service refueling stations in Italy. The hotels were around 60€ per night. Food expenses were on the high side with around 50-60€ per person per day. The pay roads and vignettes cost nearly 100€ in total and there was around 30€ spent on parking fees. The initial ferry trip cost 170€ (almost cheaper than fuel+hotel+food for the drive).</p>
<p>This was an amazing and basically life changing experience. This trip was the principal reason why I bought a car. It did not disappoint. Neither the trip, nor the car.</p>
<p>(to be continued with the experience of buying and owning a lightly used Mercedes C class)</p>aigariusFri, 11 Dec 2015 20:45:22 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/11/summary-of-the-debconf15-road-trip-part-2/cardebconf15debiangermanyphototravelSummary of the Debconf15 road trip (part 1)http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/10/summary-of-the-debconf15-road-trip/<p>As <a href="http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/06/24/road-tripping-to-debconf15/">planned previousely</a> I did go to Debconf15 with my new car. It was a completely new experience for me. The longest car trip that had completed before this was a 600 km drive after Debconf14 from Portland, Oregon, USA to Vancouver, Canada and back and that was just a couple days with just under 6 hours of max driving in one of the days. This was to be much, much more than that.</p>
<p>As the initial plan to take someone with me from Riga to Debconf15 fizzled out, I decided on a short-cut and started my journey with a 26 hour ferry ride from Liepaja to Travemunde. I arrived a couple hours before the departure, checked in and got a bunch of passes. They waved my car past the gate and then a worker waved me up to top deck. That was a good thing as I found out later, because the lower deck is locked for the night, but you can still try to get to your car on the upper deck, if you forgot something there. The deck hands expertly maneuvered me in the car to a very tight corner and put blocks under the wheels. At this point you would want to fold your mirrors, put on a parking break and pick up everything that you will need trought the night and go to your cabin. I sucked at planing this enough in advance, so I did not have cabin - just a seat in a common seating area.</p>
<p>That is something that I do not wish to repeat, ever. Imagine around 20 people in a small room filled with around 40 airplane type seats. There are lockers there to put your stuff in, but that is it. You are supposed to bring your own blanket. I brought a sleeping bag, that was a good move as I was not cold at least. But I didn't get a good night's sleep either. The ferry was full of Estonian, Latvian and Russian long haul truck drivers who also used the ferry as a shortcut for the long road and also as a 26 hour break from work where they could drink and party as much as they wanted to. That went on to at least 4 am. The sleeping room was dark, but there was noise leaking in both from engines and from the truckers and when they simmered down, then another noise started - some drunk or maybe even crazy guy was there in the room constantly talking to himself for hours. No One could get him to stop. I did fall asleep in the end, but that was not a fun ride. There was food on board (3 meals included) and that was actually very nicely made, above common diner standard. And there was no Internet there - the ship was out of reach of the coastal mobile networks for most of the trip. I read a couple books in Kindle over that trip.</p>
<p>One noteworthy detail is how tight they manage to <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOVgYoPBdolGYLIfPmcguPaEofPdZVlg8k2H8yNeq5806BlIaA9Wpkk7TWT3Ci-Ew/photo/AF1QipPrwaUl4-3EP9yFrCDY_pXAU44fdXfSW9M9Oijt?key=NDNiaE5xeklmeVdKeWpORFRlQS1ZcnI0UnZGS19R">pack the cars onto the ship</a> - there is barely enough space to squeese between the cars sideways and even that is sometimes impossible between the large trucks. For many cars there was definitely not enough space to open the doors. This adds to the need to pick up everything that you will need overnight from the car immediately. Unless you have a Tesla Model X that is :).</p>
<p>It took nearly an hour after docking in Travemunde before the first batch of trucks inched off the ferry before I could drive off and start moving too. And as soon as I got off, I immediately got lost. I was using the build-in navigation of the car so that I don't use up all the limited mobile traffic for Wase, but as that navigation data was not updated for a couple of years (car makers want you to pay insane money for map updates, like over 250€ every time you want to bring you maps up to date) it routed me to a dead end - to a street that no longer existed due to ongoing reconstruction. The map picked up traffic and weather information from a local radio transmitter just fine, but not map updates. Had to just drive randomly in the general direction of where I wanted to go for a while before the navigator rerouted itself along actually existing roads.</p>
<p>Then I drove to Hamburg and then the next morning continued down to <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipOVgYoPBdolGYLIfPmcguPaEofPdZVlg8k2H8yNeq5806BlIaA9Wpkk7TWT3Ci-Ew/photo/AF1QipNm9Z1wCKJV0Fu9A47ZmDlA9F7gWFok4B66ixiQ?key=NDNiaE5xeklmeVdKeWpORFRlQS1ZcnI0UnZGS19R">Koblenz</a>, where I decided to stay for a couple of nights so that I could enjoy more of the city and have less of a just-drive mode as well as to be able to enjoy some local wines. The Mosel Rieslings are amazing white wines with very reasonable prices. In the drive there was my first experience of the motorways and the first experience of road sections with no speed limit. I am not a risk taker, but on the perfect German autobahns when the road is dry and the sun is shining it feels perfectly comfortable to drive at 160-180 km/h. Even in a heavy downpour the speeds dropped to merely 120 km/h and it still felt perfectly safe. People were predictable and aware of their surroundings. That is one type of road where you have to look in your rearview mirror almost as often as looking forward. If you are going 160 on the middle lane and are coming up to a "slowpoke" doing only 140 there and you start to think about overtaking him using the third lane, then you must first check very carefully, because there can easily be a Lamborghini flying past at 220. And, by German road rules, the slow car gives way in such situation. At this point of the trip there were only a few unlimited sections along my way and I only felt comfortable increasing my speed to 200 km/h two times for a very short period. It took a lot of attention to drive at such speeds and it took a free road.</p>
<p>Just before I left for Germany one of the tires of my car started to let out air. Nothing much, but like 0.5 atm in a week. So I brought it into service. They pulled out a 8 cm long rusted screw out of the tire. They fixed the tire with a thread and a plug. Some experts warned me against using the autobahn to the full speed with such "fixed" tire, but after testing the waters with some high speed driving and regular pressure checks on the first days I can now say with certainty - if you tyre is repaired correctly, then there is no problem going with full speed on the autobahn. Maybe the tires would not hold their full W rating anymore, but 200 km/h they held without any issues.</p>
<p>After Debconf15 I picked up a passenger and moved on. The rest of the trip was planned in detail with hotels pre-booked and rough plan for every day ahead. The plans basically worked. Each day was similar to the next - wake up, breakfast, get in the car, drive between 5 and 8 hours with a lunch stop in the middle, get to destination, have diner, look around, sleep, repeat. For some places this worked, for others it did not.</p>
<p>On the first day I was still driving mostly through Germany, but this time going strictly down south. The roads were empty and thus faster. This was the place where I found the top speed of my car. It was 218 km/h. The car hit its electronic limiter and did not go any faster even if I felt that there was some more power to give. My car is basically the weakest Mercedes C class of 2012, but even with that there was plenty of power even for fun autobahn drives. You might get better acceleration at speeds over 90 km/h if you get a C220 CDI that adds a second turbine to the engine, but unless you do live in Germany that is really a useless feature as the slow speed turbine in C180 CDI gives it plenty of power at the sub-80 speeds where most people of the world really need it. Or rather really want it. The feeling of driving safely over 215 km/h is quite amazing even if it is very taxing to both mind and to the car. If normally the car ate 4.5l per 100km at 90 km/h and barely over 5.5l per 100km at 140 km/h, then upon reaching 215 km/h the fuel meter was alarmingly stuck at over 15l per 100km. Fun is not cheap.</p>
<p>Another non-cheap thing is driving through Swiss alps. The highway vignette there costs 40 CHF, which is basically 40€. Now I would actually pay that without a second thought if I were to plan going through there, but it was not in my plans. my plan was to simply drive into the border town of Basel, rest there overnight and drive out towards France. Here a fun feature of the in-car navigation save me a lot of time. There is a lot of options about what roads to avoid: highways, toll roads, tunnels and vignette roads. Typically one would use this to drive on vignette roads, but avoid roads with extra tolls, but for this part I switched it around and had the car guide me to the hotel with non-vignette roads only. That worked like a charm.</p>
<p>What didn't work was Basel. Maybe it is a nice city, but it is not a city where one can see much of anything if you just drive into it in the evening. Everything is closed and there are basically no people in the streets. Even the streets were pretty boring with just an ocasional <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPQWLn8yBu79tgurHpFTzH3q6Y6UpuNZwlqbFaX?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">old tram</a> passing by.</p>
<p>We left Basel behind and went into France. Destination: Lyon. Immediately after leaving Basel we started hunting for some nice breakfast place. It took a couple hours of diving around small coutry roads and passing trough all the small villages before there finally was a <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPEmB5rdHlU27p1rWNpI3VtbzMRY7fk8QVqLm1c?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">bakery</a> that was open in the morning. And judging from the amount of people coming there, it was the only one for some larger area. At least we had a nice, <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNkRzOZWiZacgF0MIY0ULWLZPTAh-t1cQcnZh27?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">french breakfast</a> there. Lyon was cloudy, but most of the rain was behind us in Germany. The city of Lyon was far more conductive to evening strolls and drive-by sightseeing. There was a very pretty river with riverside open <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOQsVSKic-ruHk-dgfEpWXNmBzKialT4uAslaa6?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">swimming pools</a>. There was a cozy <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOYTpe2kYJCmFjhjY0AZsF5n_CvhPPmq_NPjihY?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">restoraunt street</a> with a very nice sushi place. And there was pretty church on a hill with a sprawling park that looked <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipP1TFbahgnsU0dYDXFxlXiAngSeXA9qk3TYJwbL?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">amazing</a> even in the falling darkness of the summer night. Add a bit of backlit bridge <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMpXtCwESlHUcOnh-q2uvSncgjqCX2u2ERIfN6m?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">spiderweb</a> or a full moon by a nicely lit up <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPygSM7G0R_M-e4a95nES_PyJx2Cxz32PNORW6q?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">hill</a> and you have a great setup for an amazing evening.</p>
<p>After Lyon my plan called for something truly special. This time the destination was not the most important bit, the most important part in that day was the drive. That was because the plan was to drive via the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_de_la_Bonette">highest paved road in Europe</a>. Even before reaching the actual scenic road, the presceeding roads were magnificent. After hitting the first foothills of the Alps the roads became very, very fun. The regular country roads mixed with narrow mountain roads and serpantines. Very often on such roads exchanging with an oncoming vehicle was only possible if one of the vehicles stopped on a side of the road and only on some parts of the road. I drove rather slow there while the locals easily did 90 km/h on the narrow mountain roads. That did look exactly as crazy as it sounds. It was especially crazy as there was a lot of fog, rain and clowds all around us as we were <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNFqlCnlwEJ3io2qeXRGqC_9NHqRF23fs00OgOg?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">climbing the Alps</a>. But sometimes it took only a few minutes and the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipN7HfZc2PGKPtd0NI-iW7Qf1SJ-Gob5rIkaH3rR?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">fog</a> was <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPEzeyugEUtsvPmzr4GpgvcGHSKpqJogjoH3tiv?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">gone</a>. And when that happened <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipO_N6alwlQzOMbpRSGRTYUy9JSuMjH37l0OKFvd?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">the sights</a> were just amazing. As we went on and went higher, the weather just <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipMFcW7y9XS_EuxGeJQWM-bwmfFtwiB2vEP0Qo-2?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">improved</a>. The clouds were <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPK_z2YG9M7rZLflW3gHztgCHO13E3_mD_hkLAC?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">never too far</a> but as we started the climb in the mountain pass itself, they <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipO-rBFtuKlZg9etR9AV98mxh56nbNa2Wn8UMKLC?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">parted around us</a> in perfect sun bursts. As the elevation went over 2000 meters, trees disapeared and by 2300 meters only moss remained on the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipN4awv9gyyEjmHKvGw4Lo-kvHkD4-uOShfAuqd6?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">ground with some sheep</a> eating it. The views were breathtakingly huge and only the small dots of <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipOY6deDHtIxmueoQXERNYwdaakDeuvr6ZGuz7_F?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">sheep and cars</a> on the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNEMbzocnrZ6SOaIifNvybVBbiUOwl6FLTSNbth?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">only road</a> around gave some semblance of scale. <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipP6Uctc3Dfszdxwaqp0VUja9xgVjE8n-m212PmJ?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">My car</a> fit in here well. I was starting to feel the shortness of breath and the car was a bit heavier to start off as well, but still it kept moving and kept us warm as the outside temperature plunged as we <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPvdaFu0R1OLpRnrYGdKoOi3BiWr9ULPBzgyPFH?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">went up</a>. After reaching the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNs_hS7Q4NclalSSZjP2D31Miw8E3ElP-nnbGSt?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">highest point</a> that one could drive to, there was still a place to go. There is a footpath to climb the remaining 70 meters to the very top of the Bonette mountain to <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipM-asdGnwMUXFym75xt1w8v5keVqoSiufixttOg?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">2862 meters</a>. There is almost nothing there, but some information stands and an observation platform, but it is worth it. We saw the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipPiieoE9mOdTIzOvV98wC2dCMD4u4Sz6NtRWtgL?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">views</a> for a few minutes before the clouds decided that we had enough luck and started rolling over the mountain with <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipM6C8l8cO6PdjjqMORsvnheTbY5EDec9_AT-6Ft?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">force</a>. It was also getting dark already.</p>
<p>The way down was faster, darker, wetter and slightly scary. In less than an hour we went from 2862 meters and almost zero to sea level and +27 with high humidity. There was dew forming on the cold car as we were coming down the hill. I switched the transmission to manual as recommended in the manual and went downhill in the first two gears, breaking with the engine. The drive was fun and I wish there was more time and more light and also more driving experience for me to be able to enjoy that road more as the tight hairpin turns there are just amazing.</p>
<p>And after all that we arrived in Nice on the <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipNJ6fmHceFfJI04XSWikFdoP-bFSrG8ekAIvFRg?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">Coast de Azure</a>, the famous seaside of the rich. I dipped into the sea there in the morning. It was an interesting experience, especially on a <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPdAAew1Xlya2Ha-4hKxdyCHFkUSlp6OcJkw1ERarmlOiKxNFdxLdXqB4g9AgO7Ow/photo/AF1QipM0rzVfhOgUkNyy1sUWuJxAtfEmEbQD5Omt_uzj?key=SHJROWp1c2xvSGFxUF92OGwxX0RHUDlnbzFVWS1n">stony beach</a> with very strong waves. I got a couple bruises, but I was quite happy with some swimming done in the Med sea.</p>
<p>(to be continued with Italy, Austria and Poland)</p>aigariusThu, 10 Dec 2015 22:12:18 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/12/10/summary-of-the-debconf15-road-trip/cardebconf15debiangermanyDebconf 15 group photohttp://aigarius.com/blog/2015/08/18/debconf-15-group-photo/<p>The long awaited group photo from Debconf15 is now available: <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/aigarius/20501550589/in/album-72157657303422182/">here</a> and <a href="http://annex.debconf.org/debconf-share/debconf15/photos/debconf15_group.jpg">here</a>.</p>
<p>Due to its spectacular glory, the Google Photos could not handle the massive 52 Mb, and 19283*8740=168.5Mpix of awesomness, so <a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPxzmJzvYAYu74lvoN0Up31Y0gzw_bvJJs_JTZVMkfJFZnLGz-KTJhHhWQS4VnmrA/photo/AF1QipN5WAqINcfRQY05gXhyyalLeoCoGbymnOcFplpR?key=R0ZkUGhGZjZrYVBmeUx2a3hxZE5JZ2VyZ3Z6QkNB">there</a> is only a half-size version.</p>
<p>Also I plan to have a lightning talk on Thursday on how exactly such things are made :)</p>aigariusTue, 18 Aug 2015 21:10:59 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2015/08/18/debconf-15-group-photo/Debian-planetUbuntu.lv-planetdebconf15debiangermanypeoplephototravelBetter now!http://aigarius.com/blog/2008/08/07/better-now/<p>As soon as my laptop came back from repairs, I started to feel better - being back with 1920x1200 resolution is great! NVidia is much more stable than ATi and Intel wireless is just great!</p>
<p>And then last weekend I was in Berlin for the FFII board meeting and used the opportunity to see the city with my girlfriend. I must say that there is a lot of interesting things to see in Berlin.The things I would recommend everyone are: go to the Zoo (5-7 hours of superb fun), then take bus 100 to Alexander Platz (driving by all the main landmarks), go up on the TV tower, then come down and sometime late in the night go to <a href="http://wikitravel.org/en/Berlin#Clubs">'Weekend' dance club</a>.</p>
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<p>The Zoo is fantastic - most of the time there are no walls between you and the animals, only deep pits. Most animals can be seen both in their outdoor spaces and in their indoor places. The park is a bit maze like, but the best thing is that you can just keep on walking and you will always have something interesting to look at. Wherever there is a underwater bit, there is a glass plate that allows you to look underwater. It looks almost like huge TV sets. When a family of hippos swims by a long wall of glass, the effect fantastic. And so is the whole zoo.</p>
<p>Going to the 'Weekend' club was another interesting experience. We found out of the club from Wikitravel and went there around 22:30. The place was barely warming up. We easily found the big office building with red "SHARP" ad on top just off the Alexander Platz, but it was fully dark and quiet with no signs about the club, so we looked for people. At one of the entrances there were a couple people with a table that took 5€ from us and waved us inside to the elevators. When elevators came, they had two guys inside that did not ask us anything, but just shot us up to the 15th floor, we followed the small stream of people and came to a wooden roof-top terrace with lots of place to sit, to chat, to drink and a very long bar with lots of staff ready to make us a drink. And there was music - great quality soft disco music that was quiet enough so that people could relax and talk freely. You could see the street below, but not a sound from this roof-top chill-out reached the street level - that is one great way to make a club. We also checked out the small dance room on the 15th floor, but did not stay around for long enough to see the main area on the 12th floor. Again, the sound system was perfect - they were rolling dance music on vinyl and I could really hear the difference in the depth of sound and appreciate how the female DJ mixed the tracks seamlessly. We were a bit surprised by the number of gay people in the club, both male and female. It is very rare to see that in Latvia because of the still prevalent prejudice, unfortunately.</p>
<p>We also went to a great place serving South African food and we ate some ostrich and gnu meat which was cooked flawlessly. It was a place of a slightly higher level than we normally eat, but it was totally worth it.</p>aigariusThu, 07 Aug 2008 20:58:32 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2008/08/07/better-now/Debian-planeteventffiifoodgermanymusictravelworkFrankfurthttp://aigarius.com/blog/2008/03/04/frankfurt/<p>I have decided to do something special for my 25th birthday this year so I have made plans to visit Frankfurt from 23rd to 25th of March with my girlfriend. Her birthday is just a day before mine. </p>
<p>I have read the <a href="http://wikitravel.org/en/Frankfurt">Wikitravel article</a> and am looking forward to seeing the city. Is there anything special that I should look up? I am interested in trying some German traditional food while I am there, any suggestions on food to try and places to get it from? And finally, are there any Debian developers that would care to meet for a drink and maybe point us to some places only locals know?</p>aigariusTue, 04 Mar 2008 13:15:39 +0000http://aigarius.com/blog/2008/03/04/frankfurt/debiangermanytravel